Is Your Novel Manuscript Dead On Arrival?

Names with punctuation marks are almost always awkward and frequently cause readers to stumble.

Unfortunately, most people aren't interesting enough to engross an audience. If you want to write about yourself, please write an autobiography. Keeping yourself out of your fiction will improve your writing because you will have a better perspective of how your readers will see the character. It will also keep your work from feeling like a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Romances are most effective when there is a strong in-story reason for why the main character falls in love with the love-interest. If it's just because the love-interest is beautiful, we won't care whether or not the guy gets the girl (or vice versa).

If you can remove these interjections, please do so. In most cases, they don't add anything positive and they make the narrator or speaker feel like he's wasting time. They may be acceptable for occasional pauses in dialogue, but please be sparing.

Bestselling and classic authors have a preestablished credibility with their audience that you do not. For example, readers will start reading a Michael Crichton book even if it has a terrible one-word title. They probably won't extend you the same courtesy.

Using made-up words will confuse and irritate readers. If it's remotely possible to use an English word, please do so.

Made-up words tend to confuse and overwhelm readers rather than intrigue them. If your story uses made-up words very early on, publishers will take that as a sign that you don't pace very well. (Also, they are particularly ineffective in titles).

High-intensity scenes like fights tend to wear out their welcome pretty quickly. If you need more than 1500 words to tell a fight scene, it's probably monotonous.

A dialogue that feels like a transcript isn't very immersive. Adding nonverbal details will make the dialogue feel fuller and more interesting.

Like aspirins, obscenities are effective in small doses but can cause nausea and brain damage in large doses. Sorry, USMC!

Generally, readers like moral complexity. A morally complex hero might not be on the right side of every issue. That's fine. Readers will like that better than a perfect hero because it's more realistic and relatable.

For a novel manuscript to grab the attention of readers and publishers from the outset, a compelling opening hook is crucial. If the manuscript begins without engaging the reader or lacks a strong initial appeal, it might be dismissed or considered "Dead on Arrival." While details such as settings and character development are important, the lack of an intriguing hook can prevent the manuscript from progressing in the hands of agents and publishers. An extensive glossary is less critical to the initial impact and can be viewed as supplementary material rather than a core manuscript element.

First, you should introduce your main character quickly. Three pages is a good rule of thumb. Second, it is a really bad idea to try to surprise readers with a character's name. When we finally find out that the hero's name is Linda, we're not going to be pleasantly surprised so much as ANGRY that you waited 150 pages to tell us her name.

If your character is destined for greatness, he's probably a Chosen One. Let him make his own destiny. Also, great prophecies are really cliche.

Generally, the reader is entitled to everything the point-of-view character knows. If you try to hide crucial information (like that the narrator was actually the killer all along, or that everyone is a squirrel), you will get rejected.

Effective pacing that varies according to the narrative's demands can significantly enhance a novel's engagement level, keeping readers interested without overwhelming them or dragging the story.

These traits don't have a lot of dramatic potential. Typically, an interesting trait will show us more about the character than his demographics (young, old or Elven) or his capabilities (strong, brave or magical).

Frequent or unclear shifts in point of view can confuse readers and disrupt the flow of the narrative, making the manuscript seem unpolished and difficult to follow.

Publishers hate it when you try to describe what the narrator looks like by having him narrate himself looking at his reflection. It's cheesy and usually stalls the flow of the story. Making this mistake will probably get your manuscript instantly rejected.

It's not cool or mysterious for characters to withhold information when they don't have a good in-story reason for doing so; it's just annoying.

For a writer developing a novel manuscript, mastering narrative structure and character development is crucial. This skill enables the writer to craft compelling and coherent stories that engage readers by effectively building the world of the novel and creating relatable, dynamic characters. This contrasts with skills unrelated to the direct crafting of a narrative, such as mathematical formulas, digital marketing, or web development, which, while potentially valuable, are not central to the process of writing a novel.

Using brand-names tends to limit the appeal of your story to a particular region and time. It's also usually a lazy way to write. For example, instead of saying a character is rich, you might say he shops at DKNY rather than Walmart, but it is more powerful to describe the clothing itself rather than relying on a brandname. For example, someone replaces his clothes every season "to be current" is wealthy. In contrast, someone that wears his shoes until the soles burn out is demonstrably poor. In contrast, by using a brand-name, you're betting that the vast majority of your readers will know what you're referring to. Even if that's true now, will it be true in 10 or 20 years?

One-word titles are almost always weak. Generally using 2-6 words is more effective. Isn't there some interesting detail you can add that will help pique our interest?

If the first sentence has pronouns, the author is probably withholding valuable information. For example, look at the opening sentence "Until it happened, I had no idea how badly they had screwed me." The narrator is obviously hiding what "it" and "they" are. The sentence would be much more interesting if we rewrote it to "Until the dragon's face burst into a gooey mess, I had no idea how badly Adventurers, Inc. had screwed me." Specifics are generally much more interesting than meaningless pronouns.

Niceties are problematic because they rarely advance the plot or show us anything interesting about the characters. Generally, they just waste time and annoy readers.

A unique and distinct narrative voice helps to set a manuscript apart in a crowded market, offering a fresh perspective and a memorable reading experience. This individuality can be a significant factor in catching the attention of agents and publishers.

While character development is important, focusing too much on detailed physical descriptions in the opening pages can detract from more crucial elements like establishing the main conflict, setting the tone, and introducing the protagonist.

Compared to a movie, it's extremely difficult to write a fight scene with many combatants. It's hard enough to describe what three fighters are doing at once, let alone six or ten. If you'd like to use many fighters, I recommend breaking it into a series of 2-3 person duels rather than a single battle royale. Also, if you think that your fight has to have many fighters to be epic, you may be better suited for screenwriting than novel-writing.

A thesaurus can be a powerful tool, but you have to make sure you don't use words that are out of place. You also have to make sure that you get the connotations right. A thesaurus will list words like "amble," "mosey," and "sashay" as synonyms for "walk," but each of those words suggests a different kind of walk.

Typically, color does not show us very much interesting about the character. OK, so your character has green eyes instead of blue or brown. So what? Try to focus on details that capture the character's choices and lifestyle. For example, instead of focusing on his hair-color (which he has no control over), mention the way he wears his hair. That suggests something about his attitude and environment. Also, his tight suit and geeky glasses and smile suggest something about his job, mood and education. If we gave him a Rush t-shirt instead and a sloppy haircut, he'd look like a much different character.